10 years of Dreamcast; the 10 best games.

Sega’s Dreamcast celebrated its 10th Birthday recently so this would seem the perfect time to take a look at ten of the Dreamcast’s best games.

The Dreamcast has always been something of a paradox; a superb gaming machine with great games that was somehow never truly loved until it was dead.

Despite its short life, the Dreamcast is blessed with a fine catalogue of games so picking ten is not going to easy! I’m sure your list may well differ from mine so please do let us know what you think.


10.
Space Channel 5 (Sega/United Game Artists).
Space Channel 5 is a music rhythm game similar in many ways to Parappa the Rapper. Primarily taking control of the sexy Ulala (Space Channel 5’s reporter), you must dance and blast your way through the game in an attempt to beat the Morolians; an alien race forcing everyone to dance against their will.

Packed full of style and humor, the game very much has Mizuguchi’s (Rez/Lumines) style throughout and even Michael Jackson manages to cameo!



9.
Samba De Amigo (Sega/Sonic Team).
Sonic Teams rhythm action game was in many ways the first sign of things to come in the shape of Nintendo’s Wii and it’s no coincidence that the game has also appeared on that platform.

The game came bundled with two hand held maracas which connected to a special sensor bar that plugged into the Dreamcast. Sensors in the bar and on the cords of the maracas could determine the exact position of the maracas when the player held them so if you were instructed to shake the maracas above your head, the software could tell if you doing so.

Samba is great fun to play (I still prefer the Dreamcast version to the Wii’s) and has loads of charm and character as you’d expect from a Sonic Team title. A great family/party game that was rarely put away in our household. It’s just a shame that obtaining the original game with Sega’s maracas is such an expensive affair these days.



8.
Street Fighter III: Third Strike (Capcom).
Capcom’s conversion of their arcade hit is not only one of the Dreamcast's best fighting games; it’s also one of the best Street Fighter games ever. In fact many people still put this game up as THE best Street Fighter game. The Dreamcast played host to the first home version of the game and it is wonderful to play in every respect.



7.
Crazy Taxi (Sega/Hitmaker)
The Dreamcast played host to many of Sega’s arcade game conversions, and Crazy Taxi was one of these which I simply could not put down.

The style, the music (by The Offspring and Bad Religion), the frantic game play (which involves tearing round a city transporting passengers to their destinations), everything about Crazy Taxi just screamed play me.

In many ways time hasn’t been kind to Crazy Taxi as a franchise due to lame ports and sequels, but the Dreamcast's original is still a joy to play and it suits the controls of the Dreamcast’s joypad perfectly.



6.
Skies of Arcadia (Sega/Overworks).
RPG’s were never in great supply on the Dreamcast, especially in the West where the only other RPG release of note was Grandia II.

Despite this lack of content for RPG fans, Sega still managed to deliver this superbly fresh RPG based on Sky Pirates. Using your airship to travel between islands which floated in the air, Skies of Arcadia was a supremely crafted adventure that managed to distinguish itself from its contemporaries and still feels fresh today.



5.
Ikaruga (Treasure).
Only ever released in Japan on the Dreamcast; Ikaruga was Treasures spiritual sequel to its seminal ST-V arcade and Saturn shooter, Radiant Silvergun.

Ported over from the Dreamcast based Sega Naomi arcade hardware, Ikaruga blended manic shooting action with an almost puzzle like quality as players attempted to chain enemies of different colours by changing the polarity of the main craft.

Featuring beautiful graphics and masterful game play, Ikaruga quickly became one of the Dreamcast’s most imported games. Whilst both the later Gamecube and XBLA conversions are very good, many will argue (myself included) that the best home experience of Ikaruga remains on Dreamcast.



4.
Shenmue (Sega/AM2).
Produced and directed by Sega legend Yu Suzuki (Out Run/Virtua Fighter), Shenmue was probably Sega’s most ambitious Dreamcast game.

The game aimed to give the player total interactivity set in a world that tried to mimic real life as much as possible with its simulation of time, weather and interactivity. It’s not an easy game to get into but its worth the effort as the player is rewarded with a world quite like any other produced at the time and graphics that really did push the Dreamcast.

Shenmue’s budget and ambition was huge and this is reflected in every aspect of the game. A classic.



3.
Jet Set Radio (Sega/Smilebit).
In many ways the Dreamcast showcased Sega at its creative best. Much like Shenmue, Jet Set Radio showcased Sega’s creative talent at its very best.

The game pioneered cel-shaded graphics and its style was completely unique at the time. The games premise centre’s around roller blading graffiti gangs in Tokyo; the player skating round avoiding trouble, racing and tagging various objects.

On paper Jet Set Radio shouldn’t be my type of game and yet it is an utter joy to play and still unique in its blend of style and game play. It also spawned a superb sequel called Jet Set Radio Future (one of my favorite games of all time) which was released on Microsoft’s Xbox console and both games feature superb soundtracks (the soundtrack to JSRF is the only game soundtrack I have ever brought!).



2.
Soul Calibur (Namco).
To this day I’ll never understand why Soul Calibur, a launch title for the Dreamcast, never propelled sales of the console into the stratosphere. Was it the poor marketing by Sega? Perhaps people never really saw it promoted? Whatever it was, this game should have shown the masses what the Dreamcast was truly capable of.

At the time, Soul Calibur looked simply amazing (and to be fair it still does) and it played beautifully. Had this been put next to a Playstation running Tekken in stores up and down the country, the Dreamcast may have had a different fate

The game came with a VGA option and using this option produced mind blowingly sharp visuals. So good that I still play this today Soul Calibur is a masterful piece of programming by Namco.



1.
Rez (Sega/United Game Artists).
Ok, ok – this is a biased choice! Rez is one of my favorite games ever and I’ll play Mizuguchi’s hypnotic masterpiece as long as I’m still a gamer. Probably beyond that if it’s possible!

At its most basic Rez is simply an on-rails shooter; you move the firing reticule around the screen and shoot enemies. You can collect upgrades that allow your character (essentially a hacker avatar) to evolve (take more hits) and power ups that temporarily take out all the enemies for you, kind of like an auto pilot. And that’s it, that's literally is all you do.

But of course Rez is so much more. The sound effects (for example when an enemy is destroyed) are essentially portions of electronic music; string together a few kills and your ears will be greeted by the sounds of drums and trills which blend in with the games ever evolving beat.

The visuals are striking and unique, somewhat a cross between a game and a music visualizer. Each part of Rez, the visuals, the music, the sound; blends in together to form part of a truly hypnotic and mesmerizing experience.

It’s not an easy game to describe, and at its core it is simplistic. But sit yourself in a darkened room, turn up the volume and let your mind immerse itself in its vibrant world and you’ll find a gaming experience quite like any other.

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Dreamcast Lives!

Just in time for the 10th Birthday of Sega’s brilliant Dreamcast console (at least if your American), comes news of another new game for the system - Rush Rush Rally Racing by Senile Team (developer of Beats of Rage).

The game is a top down racer (think Micro Machines /Super Cars) that can be played by up to 4 players in split screen mode. Its due out in October and you can grab it direct from the publishers, redspotgames.

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Finally the Sonic game we have been waiting for?

Sega have just announced that they are at last developing a Sonic game which will go back to the series 2D roots.

After years of fans complaining about Sonic’s pretty dire 3D adventures, it seems as though Sega have finally listened.

The game, currently known as Project Needlemouse, will be built entirely from the ground up and be in HD which suggests to me at least that it will be hosted on 360 or PS3 and possibly even be a download release on XBLA and PSN.

Just in case you don't get the reference, the very first Sonic the Hedgehog game was initially codenamed "Mr Needlemouse" whilst in development. No other details are known at this point so for now just enjoy the teaser trailer and dream!

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PS3 isn’t the best games machine, but it is a great piece of kit.

The current generation of consoles marked something of a departure for me. At any other time in my gaming life I have always brought all the new consoles at the point of (or very close to) their release dates. This time around however I’ve only just now completed the ‘set’ with our recent acquisition of an 80GB Playstation 3.

When the machine launched it was extremely expensive and given the lack of any real decent exclusive titles I decided to wait until there were some titles on the system I wanted to actually play.

Since then the PS3 has hardly set the world on fire with its games and thus I never really got round to making the purchase. A console should live and breathe in the quality of its games library and to date the PS3 has offered very little that isn’t already being done better on Microsoft’s winter heater.



Multi-format titles have on the whole been better on the 360 (The Orange Box debacle instantly springs to mind as does the more recent Ghostbusters ‘admission’ by Terminal Reality) and to date the exclusives generally have been more appealing (Halo series, Gears of War, PGR, GTA IV exclusive DLC).

Some developers such as Haze’s Free Radical have voiced complaints over the PS3 being difficult to code for, whilst heavy hitter Valve have gone one step further and simply refused full stop to code for the system. This decision alone means that PS3 owners may never get to experience the brilliance that is Left 4 Dead and potentially the up and coming (soon I hope!) Half Life 2: Episode 3.

I must admit that Uncharted: Drakes Fortune and Little Big Planet have both nearly persuaded me to part with my cash previously but unusually the sensible family man overruled the impulsive gamer’s heart.

It’s also worth noting that although I do not consider myself a ‘fan boy’, I do at times tend to think of Sony more negatively than the other two big hitters. This is mainly due to the impact Sony has had on Sega over the years; they are after all responsible for Sega’s exit from the hardware market, they killed the Dreamcast right? Well no, Sega unfortunately managed that all by themselves.

Sega failed to recognise the importance of 3D with the Saturn, produced a machine for the ‘hardcore’ (I prefer the term old skool mind you) and missed out on a whole new generation of ‘clubbing’ gamers.

They then produced the brilliant and pioneering Dreamcast, failed to market it so anyone really knew what it was and again produced old skool games. Now that’s great for someone like me but was hardly likely to entertain the newer (and by now much larger) gaming demographic.

Now you may well assume given so much negativity on my part and the minor bias towards all things blue and spiky that I’m simply writing here to bash Sony and its black monolith. But to my own surprise I’m actually writing to say how impressed with it I really am.

Whilst many will no doubt disagree, it’s not in this writer’s opinion the best out and out system for games, something I have covered enough above. It’s expensive (although at the time of writing there are numerous price cuts around due to the imminent arrival of the PS3 Slim) and very surprisingly the word Playstation is no longer synonymous to many with the phrase games console. Owning a Playstation isn’t the cool thing it was in the past.

Bizarrely we actually never really ‘paid’ for our PS3, it came ‘free’ with my partners new mobile phone contract (I’m holding off on renewing mine for the launch of the PSP Go!).

Our sole reason at the time for picking the PS3 as our freebie was that due to various circumstances we no longer had a DVD player in the main living room. Since the PS3 is both a DVD and Blu-ray player it seemed the obvious choice for us despite its gaming shortcomings.

What we never realised at the time was just how good the PS3 is at serving as our complete family entertainment centre. And it’s here that the PS3 really excels, it is because of this the PS3 sees use in our household every day and by several occupants.

We have our DVD and Blu-ray player for our films. We have a music centre which streams music from our PC effortlessly along with our photo and video collection. Then there’s Vidzone, essentially a free music video channel where you pick what plays. And of course there’s the games, finally Uncharted and Little Big Planet are getting my well deserved attention (Uncharted being the first game in ages that I’ve actually bothered to complete). Heck we can even surf the net with it during the television ad breaks.

Of course the 360 also has some media features of its own but they simply are not as well implemented.

The DVD player is DVD only and it’s intrusively noisy for a front room. The media streaming works to a point but it’s not as easy or as smooth as on the PS3. The music videos on Live are limited and have to be paid for. It can’t surf the internet and unless you own an Elite model the HDD is woefully small. And also, somehow, the 360 just doesn’t look like an entertainment centre. It looks like a games console; it looks out of place under my main TV.

My partner has never really touched a non-handheld games console before and yet with the PS3 she presents our photos to friends and family, pops music on in the morning to keep the kids quiet (our 1 year old daughter dives across her pen when the PS3 power button beeps because she loves to dance away to the videos) and even watches the odd film.

And so, it’s only now that I’ve come to realise that the old skool gamer in me has blinded me into ignoring this great machine.

No it’s not the best games console, the 360 is currently the choice here with its vast library and it’s excellent (though still annoyingly chargeable) Xbox Live. But it is a great all rounder, it serves the purpose Sony always said they wanted to serve, the central family hub of entertainment, the unseen box of tricks that quietly delivers all of your living room needs without you even realising it. And for that Sony should be applauded.

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